Well, howdy there internet people, let's bow again. So today we are going to talk about

influence on the internet and how it relates to foreign policy and how that relates to recent news

concerning social media platforms and the US stance towards them. Recently we talked about how there is there is a large

push to basically get rid of Tik-Tok in the US.

And I used the term influence operation,

and a whole bunch of messages came in

asking what one was in essence and here's the thing

when you are talking about influence operations on social media

your way over complicating it okay Don't think of it as spy stuff. It is, but don't think

of it that way. It's marketing. It's advertising. Nothing more. That's all it is. And it's incredibly effective.

Let me give you an example of how it can work.

Let's say your target country has a permanent underclass, a group of people who are not treated fairly.

They are treated economically, they are treated unfairly by the criminal

justice system, by state security, they are an underclass.

That demographic, that underclass of people and their allies, they will always have an organic movement

striving for change,

justice, striving for things to be fair,

because people like things to be fair,

most people anyway.

So that organic movement exists in your target country. An influence

operation, a successful one, would be to just amplify them. On social media you amplify their message so they get more people.

As that movement grows, it's capable of disrupting the status quo in that country.

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